


Something of a Ulysses

by Homer_TheBlindBard



Category: Ghosts (TV 2019)
Genre: But it might not have been, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Poems, References to Depression, The Odyssey References, World War II, You Decide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28552881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Homer_TheBlindBard/pseuds/Homer_TheBlindBard
Summary: The Captain struggles to return to normal life after the war.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Something of a Ulysses

He had fought at home and fought abroad to end the war but now that the war was over and his last command given, he fully understood the plight of Ulysses: returned home after years at sea and unable to return to normal life.

Even miles away from the fighting plains, he could still hear the bangs as though he were now standing in the middle of it all.

Restlessness overtook him with nothing to do but pack up, return to Button House, and clear out.

While he was clearing out his room, he flicked though one of his favourite books, poems by Lord Tennyson. 

He read through the Charge of the Light Brigade again reflecting on how sad and sadly true it was.

_Theirs not to make reply,_

_Theirs not to reason why,_

_Theirs but to do and die._

_Into the valley of Death_

_Rode the six hundred_

This had always been one of those poems that struck home and surprised him for what it exposed about the real nature of war.

But now he felt that since the war had ended, another poem struck him even harder.

Ulysses:

_It little profits that an idle king,_

_By this still hearth, among these barren crags,_

_Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy._

_I am a part of all that I have met;_

_For ever and forever when I move._

_How dull it is to pause, to make an end,_

_To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use_

As time went on, the Captain felt he had more and more in common with Ulysses, re-reading The Odyssey he paused on these lines that echoed the thoughts that would likewise come unbidden in the throws of every restless night, just as Ulysses was caught in the throws of Poseidon's tumultuous wrath and lamenting his life.

_"Three or four times blessed are those countrymen of mine who fell long ago on the broad plains of Troy in loyal service. If only I too could have met my fate and died the day the trojan hoards let fly._

_But now it seems I was predestined to an ignoble death._

_There is nothing for me now but sudden death."_

But, unlike Ulysses, he could not just set out on another adventure, there were no untamed lands to subdue or paradisiacal islands to inhabit. Not even a Penelope waiting for him to return home. He had nobody but the war and now the war was gone. His title would mean nothing and so he would mean nothing.

_How dull it is to pause, to make an end,_

_To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use_

He felt hopelessly that there was nothing left to do in this life; so when it ended, suddenly and ingloriously, he expected that it would be **the** **end.**

He hadn't counted on the fact that there was something, in the back of his mind, that was left untouched and unresolved. There **was** a reason to live, but he would have to find out what it was, in death.

And just like Ulysses he would venture into the afterlife and emerge all the stronger for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Ulysses is a poem about the inability to let go of war, even after Odysseus has been fighting to return home for so long, but he doesn't know how to live a normal life again. Thought this applied to the Captain very well.


End file.
